NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — With year-round cruising from the Carnival Sunshine coming next year, Norfolk’s cruise terminal is about to see an influx of traffic.
But with that increased traffic comes the need for updates, renovations and additions at Half Moone Cruise and Celebration Center, and Norfolk’s City Council took another step this week toward making those upgrades after approving designs for the $12 million project.
Among other things, they will add two more buses to help shuttle passengers from parking garages, and they will also enclose an outdoor terrace allowing passengers to sit outside in any weather.
However, the biggest addition will be a circular ramp that will help move passengers from the second floor down to their luggage on the first floor. Nauticus’ Executive Director Stephen Kirkland said it’ll be a huge improvement on what they have now.
“We’ve got one small escalator,” Kirkland said. “We’ve got a staircase and we’ve got a tiny elevator and it’s just not efficient. And getting people off that ship, particularly as these ships get larger, and so, sort of museum design 101 now is, why worry about things that might break down? Why deal with all that when you can simply do a sort of a sloped ramp system just like you might do at an SEC football game, for instance?”
Kirkland said they will not be able to accommodate any ships detoured from Baltimore once construction begins in June. They’re hoping to be finished by January 2025, with the Sunshine arriving in February.
“It’s one thing to get these ships,” Kirkland said. “It’s another thing to be ready for them. And so, we have to be ready here onsite, and, as importantly, we as a community have to be ready for this year-round weekly traffic.”